


Second Hand Goods

by Seiberwing



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alchemy, Assorted Minor Soldier Characters, Bargaining, Dream Logic, Established Relationship, M/M, Minor Body Horror, Post-Canon, Very Minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 09:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21492268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiberwing/pseuds/Seiberwing
Summary: "There's also one more thing I need. A personal request.""Hm?" The quartermaster looked up from the list and took a second piece of paper, this one a tiny scrap with pencil scribbles on it. His lips moved again as he read it and his eyes narrowed."...an arm. You want an arm."
Relationships: Miles/Scar (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	Second Hand Goods

Major Miles' boots crunched on the snow as he walked across the yard of Fort Briggs. The wind wasn't cutting right through to the bone as it often did in the winter, but had opted for a more delicate touch, making the high-walled courtyard feel like the inside of a snowglobe. A few men tossed Miles salutes as he passed by; the rest knew to keep focused on their work.

Miles pushed his hood back as he entered the quartermaster's building, shaking the damp flakes off his head. Inside the room was crammed with crates, some half-open and some wrapped in metal bands. In the back the quartermaster sat behind his desk, white light from the snow-draped yard glinting off his glasses. He was reading a worn book and occasionally making notes in the margins of it with a chewed pen. Next to him was a stack of pens and a pair of scissors, along with a very messy log book.

As Miles approached, the man looked up and gave him a curt nod. 

"Major."

"Hello. I have the list of this month's requisitions." Miles dropped the list on the counter. The man read over the list, lips moving silently in recitations of food, ammunition, and coffee, giving idle nods or making expressions of consternation at each item.

"There's also one more thing I need. A personal request."

"Hm?" The quartermaster looked up from the list and took a second piece of paper, this one a tiny scrap with pencil scribbles on it. His lips moved again as he read it and his eyes narrowed.

"...an arm. You want an arm."

The quartermaster put the list down and made a show of gazing at both of Miles's clearly attached and functional limbs. "You know, most people are pretty content with two. Where would you even put it? Hang it off your hip like a sword?"

"Not for me. For a friend."

"Uh huh. You know those things don't come cheap, right?"

"You can take it out of my stipend."

"I don't think you'll have enough from the military to buy the model you want."

"Then from my pension, then."

"Uh uh. What's even the going rate on an arm, anyway?" The quartermaster flipped the paper and made some scribbling calculations on the back, writing numbers and then drawing little circles and triangles around them. Miles waited nervously, balancing on the balls of his feet with his hands tucked firmly behind his back.

"You know," mused the quartermaster, chewing the end of his pencil as he added a doodled sun and moon to his circles. "Edward Elric traded his arm for his brother's soul. I imagine the trade would go both ways, no?"

Miles scoffed. "You want my soul just for an arm? That can't be a fair exchange."

"Depends on the soul. Let's see it." The man looked up at him, expectant and amused. "You do still have one, right?"

Miles sighed. He took his sunglasses off and set them on the counter, let out another annoyed little grumble, and reached behind his left eye. The quartermaster watched as Miles pulled out his soul, thick and crimson with a wet sheen like the wings of a newly hatched butterfly. It made a soft squelch as he dropped it on the counter.

"Right, okay, let's see." The quartermaster spread the soul out until it was lying flat, connected by a thin tendril back to Miles. He ran his fingers across it, finding the places where its coloring was disrupted by dark, bruise-colored blotches. Occasionally it quivered like gelatin when a finger pressed too hard into it. "Not the purest soul in the world, you know."

"I am a soldier," said Miles gruffly.

"Yeah, but there's soldiers and then there's soldiers." He prodded and stretched the soul like it was a piece of cloth, noting places where it had grown thin and the spot on the edge where a piece had been snipped off, and was only slowly starting to grow back - 'my ex-wife', Miles explained.

Finally, the quartermaster patted the soul down and folded it up until it formed a tiny egg-shaped lump on the table. "All right. I think I can make you a deal. This, for the arm. Unless the price is too--"

But Miles had already reached out for the scissors on the man's desk, and in a single sharp motion severed the wet tendril connecting it to his eye socket. He expected to feel some kind of jolt or pain, but none came. The tendril simply fizzled into vapor and vanished.

"I accept." 

Miles set the dripping scissors back down on the table and folded his arms. He waited for the quartermaster to make the trade but the man simply made a note in his log book and then sat back, hands peacefully in his lap. After an awkward pause the man let out a coarse laugh.

"What, did you think I was going to just yank it off my own shoulder?" The quartermaster made a gesture of pulling on his own arm, then pushed the sleeve up to show a brown, unadorned expanse of skin running from wrist to shoulder. "That arm hasn't been mine in years, any more than Buccaneer's still carting around that automail."

Miles's eyes went wide. "But. What--but you said---"

"I said I'd make the deal for you. I didn't say the soul was for me." The man laughed again and pushed his glasses back up his nose. Red eyes nearly as bright as Miles's soul glinted behind the glasses. "The soul's for him. It's his arm, not mine. This isn't alchemy, it's investment - invest your soul and he'll make it glow brighter, as long as you're doing the same thing to his. Same with the arm...I didn't trade it. I invested it in the best place I could." 

He picked up the tiny ovoid soul and pressed it into Miles's unsteady hands. 

"I don't understand," Miles said in a weak voice. He cupped the soul in his palms. It was still slick and cool. Carefully, he poured the soul into his coat's breast pocket, feeling it pulse and throb next to his shirt.

"You will," said the quartermaster, whose face now bore a warm smile. "Now, you need to get going."

He pointed out to the door behind Miles. When Miles turned he saw not a courtyard filled with snow and soldiers but a bright expanse of sunbaked rocks and the tiny remains of homes half-destroyed or half-rebuilt.

His heart was suddenly racing, for reasons he couldn't understand. The quartermaster's hand rested on his shoulder and then gave him a single hard shove, a jolt that sent him reeling into the seat in front of him. Papers spilled from his lap onto the train car floor as Miles's eyes snapped open.

"East Line, last stop! This is the last stop on the East Line!" bellowed someone outside the car. Miles groped about under his legs for the papers and stacked them into a rough order. He must have fallen asleep while reviewing them. Around him, passengers - mainly soldiers, a few civilians - gathered their belongings, chattering to each other over the hiss of the train engine. Someone's child wailed a desire to go pee.

Miles sat back in his seat, taking in a deep breath. The air in the carriage was so warm that it was hard to breathe, but he swore he could still feel the snow on his face. He pushed up his sunglasses and touched the side of his eye, almost surprised to find the flesh firm instead of permeable. His fingers wandered down to his coat pocket and found no pulsing wetness there, just the soft paper edges of a worn photograph.

"Homesick, I suppose," he mumbled. Right. He gathered his nerve, then his luggage, and left the train. As he stepped onto the platform he saw a man waiting for him in the shade of the station's overhang, face immobile but eyes growing softer at seeing him approach.

"How was the meeting in East City?"

"Mustang continues to be intolerable, but we did at least get some work done. I'll review the full notes with you tonight, of course." Their words and tone stayed formal but there were small smiles traded between them as Scar helped carry his luggage out of the station, tiny signals that said 'it's good to be back'.

"Oh, and I've brought back a small gift - a journalist in East City reached out to me, wanting to know more about the rebuilding efforts. She says she was down here just when the war was beginning, working with a university group studying the Ishvalan people, and she was kind enough to send me some of the photographs and notes she took. I didn't have time to look at them at East City but I started reviewing them on the train back down. There's even a few drawn maps of the villages she visited."

Scar made an interested noise. He hefted the bag tucked under his right arm, pushing up his sleeve and showing off the scant edges of his tattoo. "That could be extremely valuable. So many records were destroyed during the war, even an outsider's perspective could be useful."

"I'll show you once we're back at the house. But tell me what I've missed, besides food with actual spice in it."

There was one photo in particular that Miles was saving until they were alone. The moment he saw it, as he'd tiredly poked through one of several large folders of notes and diagrams, he'd snatched it up and tucked it into his coat pocket out of fear that it would vanish.

The photo showed two young men in traditional Ishvalan garb, barely prodding at adulthood, standing next to a well. The one on the right was beaming, wearing glasses that sat slightly askew on his face, and had one foot up on a rock. The one on the left wore a serious expression that made him look years older than the one beside him, despite the label on the back of the photograph. Even in aging monochrome there was something about their eyes that drew Miles in, almost immediately to the one on the left and much later to the one with glasses and a ragged notebook under one arm.

A hand-scrawled note on the back of the photo read: _Ishvalan novice priest (left) and older brother in Kanda city center. April 6, 1900_.


End file.
